The Sword of Damascus a-4

by Richard Blake

  ‘Ah, come to clean up the mess, I see,’ I called briskly. ‘Well, so long as it doesn’t start to smell too bad, I can put up with a body in the library. So you take this poor boy and put him to bed. Gently with the clothes. Gentle with the sheets. Let him sleep until-’ Edward heaved himself up. He’d understood what I had in mind from my tone, and his displeasure was now obvious.

  ‘Very well,’ I said evenly. I pointed at the body and let the slaves set about their business without further interruption. I made sure to drop a large sheet of papyrus over the cups, then took Edward very gently by the shoulder. If its effects had been bleached away by the drug, the pain itself was still there. ‘Let us go next door,’ I said, ‘and see how my works progress. Indeed, since Karim has advised us not to leave the palace until further notice, there can be no shopping today. That leaves you with a choice between the long sleep that I do most urgently suggest and watching me improve my vision.’ I helped him into the corridor, and guided him through the entrance to the room where the smell of charcoal and the low fluttering of a polishing wheel spoke of much hard work.

  ‘I told you yesterday,’ I said as I got him through the door and handed him to someone just inside, ‘about the theory of vision taught by Epicurus. I find it more reasonable than the claim made by Plato that we all have an invisible light behind our eyes that illuminates objects for us alone. However, I’m still not entirely happy with Epicurus, great man though he was. I think a theory more consistent with the facts of vision is that light itself is a stream of atoms, and that vision arises from the differential absorption into or reflection from objects of this light. This explains darkness as a simple absence of light – though it does less well to explain why the perceived size of objects varies with their distance. But it still clarifies how shaped glass can deflect whatever atoms carry an image from their normal course.’

  But Edward had turned pale, and was beginning to sag between the arms of the two workmen who’d taken him from me. I had him laid on to the only sofa not covered in papyrus sheets, and waited for the slaves to come and take him to bed. I then turned to the much clearer, small lenses I’d ordered. There were still problems with the curvature of everything I tried. There really is a difference between using Apollonius to suggest varying degrees of convexity, and getting these reproduced in glass. And that leaves aside the question of what degree of convexity might be needed to correct the defects of my own vision. Nevertheless, I was now able to pick out lenses that showed writing much better than the day before, and even lenses that let me take in something of the view from the window.

  I distributed gold purses all round, and turned to a discussion of what I wanted next.

  A slight hangover coming on, I sat in one of the smaller gardens of the palace. My own Tower of Heavenly Peace was about fifty yards over on my left. While I still felt up to walking about, I’d gone over to look at the unmistakable signs of climbing on the water pipe. They started a few feet above the rotating mechanism, and went up as far as I could see with one of my pairs of lenses. There was still no guard at the foot of the tower, and I’d seen no evidence from within that bars were being fitted. But a palace is a notoriously slow medium for the transmission of orders. I had no doubt something would be arranged before evening.

  I handed my lenses back to the attendant who’d come out with me. Even when you haven’t seen properly in years, there is a limit to how much you want to inspect of leaves and flowers. Besides, the hangover was bringing on a headache. If it hadn’t been such a pleasant late morning, I’d already have had myself dipped into a cool bath and then put to bed until it was time to get ready for the Governor’s banquet.

  The Governor’s banquet! I groaned inwardly at the thought. It would combine the Greek inconvenience of lying on a couch all evening with the Saracen prohibition of wine. I didn’t even have the excuse that travelling through Damascus might be unsafe. This being the joint capital of Empire and Province, the Governor had his residence inside the palace. It would be a matter of being carried by chair through half a mile of crowded rooms to a stuffy hall where I’d be lucky to catch one word in two of any conversation. I took my lenses back and looked through them at the unrealistically sharp and enlarged gravel at my feet.

  It was now that I saw the double dot of intense brightness within the shadow of my lenses. The moment I saw it, I realised it shouldn’t have been any surprise. If these things could concentrate the atoms cast off – or reflected – from objects before they reached my own eyes, they could also concentrate light from the sun before it reached other objects. And it was light in itself that I was now discussing. The Epicurean theory was ingenious. But the theory of autonomous light was far more convincing. But, as said, this double light had an intensity I’d never seen before. Moving the lenses back and forth could make the size and intensity of the dots vary inversely. At the smallest, the dots were not merely bright – they could also focus heat. I watched a fallen petal smoke as a hole was burned straight through it. With shaking hand, I moved one of the lenses over a bug I saw crawling across the gravel. At first, it tried to hurry away from that intense light. But I moved with it. Finally, the thing stopped moving. Then with a loud pop and a little puff of smoke, it exploded.

  ‘Quickly,’ I said to the attendant, ‘help me down on to my knees. No – put my cloak down to cushion me. I’ll sit on the ground.’ The man came out of his reverie and looked at me as if I’d gone mad. ‘Do as you’re told!’ I snapped. ‘And tear off a strip from that book.’

  ‘ Haven’t you lived long enough already? ’ that fool Cuthbert had asked me back in Jarrow. The answer now was a most emphatic No! Ninety-seven years I’d been alive, and only now had I realised something I’d always been in a position to know. I’d seen the evidence almost every day. There was the reflection of concentrated sunlight from slightly irregular mirrors. There was the concentration of light through glass vases filled with water. There was even that tall story I’d read, and ignored, of how Archimedes had concentrated sunlight in a big mirror to burn the sails of a besieging fleet off Syracuse. In a flash brighter than those two dots I’d created, I saw the collected evidence of a lifetime’s unthinking observation. And, behind this, I saw the dim outlines of a theory that involved more than correcting my own dodgy eyes.

  I can’t tell how long I sat there, playing with my lenses. But the sun had started on my left. The next time I took conscious note of its position, it was far over on my right. My legs were stiff with the strain. My cloak was ruined from the endless fires I’d started on it. I was thinking to have myself taken back up to my office, so I could start writing all this out in a way that would prompt further reflections and ideas for experiment, when a sudden shadow took all the light from my lenses. Even then, I made a fresh discovery. If I moved the lenses to the right distance from my cloak, I could see an upside-down image of a man standing over me. No – I could see two men. I looked up. One of them was Karim.

  ‘In view of your great age, My Lord,’ he said, ‘it would not be appropriate to ask you to stand for His Highness the Governor.’

  I tried to heave myself up on to the bench, but an attack of pins and needles kept me rooted to the ground. As Karim leaned forward to help me, I peered through my lenses at the man beside him. Dressed in black, his face covered in a luxuriant growth of brown hair, the Governor stood with both hands outstretched in a gesture of respect.

  ‘Oh, it’s you!’ I said, not bothering to keep the disgust from my voice. I flopped on to the bench and tried to move my legs. ‘I should have recognised your foul stench the moment your men got into that monastery. Don’t preen yourself, though. I’d got a pretty clear whiff of it long before young Karim rolled up at my lodgings in Beirut.’ I winced and tried to rub some life into my left leg.

  The Governor smiled and dropped his hands back to his side. ‘So, we meet again,’ he said in Greek. I ignored him. He struck a pose and raised his voice. ‘At last, the circle is complete. When we last met, you
were the initiator, I the initiate. Now, I am the master.’

  I looked him in the face and grimaced. ‘To see you standing there, dressed up like a bloody Saracen,’ I replied, ‘why, it would have broken your poor father’s heart.’

  Chapter 39

  Meekal the Merciless – once Michael, son of Maximin, now Governor of Syria – looked back at his aged grandfather and laughed.

  ‘Leave us,’ he said to Karim. He repeated himself in Syriac for my attendant. When we were completely alone, he sat down beside me.

  ‘Do I get a kiss?’ he asked in Latin.

  I looked back at him. He’d aged in fifteen years. The beard was probably dyed. What might remain of the hair was hidden under the close-fitting turban of the Saracens. Between turban and beard, I saw a face now deeply lined. Only the eyes were the same as ever. Of a blue so dark it might have passed for black, they burned as if they were another of my lens experiments. I stared straight into them, unafraid.

  ‘Those teeth you had the kindness to recover,’ I said with a sniff, ‘they’ve a habit of playing up unexpectedly. You’re welcome to try for a kiss. But don’t complain if I accidentally bite off your nose.’

  He shrugged. ‘I knew you’d survive the journey,’ he said, starting over. Though still in Latin, he dropped his voice for added safety. ‘The Caliph wouldn’t believe me at first. It took a lot, even of my persuading, to get him to allow the incredibly long chain of cause and effect that has resulted in this meeting. But here you are. And all the reports assure me you are no less the man that you were when I rode out of Constantinople.’

  ‘The Intelligence Bureau got wind of your scheme,’ I said.

  He bared his darkened teeth in a grin. ‘So I hear,’ he said. ‘That ship we commissioned at such ruinous expense was taken by the Imperial Navy last month. Apparently, the survivors had kept alive by drinking each other’s blood. You may be pleased to know that they were blinded and stuffed down the first convenient lead mine. You will also be sure that I was ever so concerned by the news. I didn’t sleep well again until we heard that your accounts had been reactivated.

  ‘Oh, and I don’t doubt the Intelligence Bureau got wind of that also. We do go through the motions of keeping things under wraps. But the Empire has its agents everywhere. And, talking of these, look at that bastard Christian you had to finish off last night. It was a neat job you did on him – Karim has just shown me the body. But, to answer some of the questions you set for Karim, the man knew exactly where and how to find you because the Empire told him. And who told the Empire is a matter that I shall soon discover.’

  ‘I could have got you made Exarch of Italy,’ I said. ‘As it is, your brother was forced into the Church. I and my own blood only survived by reminding everyone that your father had been my son by adoption.’ There was no point in putting on a show of bitterness. But, adoptive or blood, the man had shat all over his family.

  ‘I know that my father worshipped you,’ Meekal replied with what may have been genuine sadness. ‘Your name was the last word he ever said. But then he was such a very good man. Without you to watch over him, he’d surely have died penniless and despised. Such a shame you had to be in Africa when the Lord Death came knocking at his door.’

  One of the nice things about false teeth is that, even when they are, smiles never look natural. Mine wasn’t. We fell silent.

  ‘But your talk of adoption reminds me that I have a new uncle,’ Meekal said with another of his grins. ‘I can’t say where you picked him up. But Karim tells me he’s quite a stunner.’

  I stared back in open hostility. To say that I feared any corruption of Edward’s morals would have been a joke. Even so, this was a family get-together I’d put off as long as I could.

  Meekal leaned forward and dropped his voice still lower. ‘I say, Grandfather, would you fancy coming inside for a drink?’

  I raised my eyebrows. ‘I thought that was one of the few vices you had to give up on conversion,’ I jeered.

  He smiled again. ‘Not really,’ he said. ‘So long as you don’t do it in public, no one important really cares. Besides, I’m the man who broke the last stand of the rebel fire-worshippers in Persia. And in a land far beyond the knowledge of your geographers, I offered conversion or the sword to seventy-two thousand men whose brown faces were tattooed white. If the Great Meekal wants a drink after all that, no one dares object.’

  ‘Better to reign in Hell than serve in Heaven,’ I said in Greek, quoting Euripides.

  ‘Not Hell,’ he answered with a laugh, now back in Greek. ‘It’s anything but Hell. As for reigning – well, we shall see.’ He got up and held out his hands. ‘Now, do come inside. You look quite fagged out after a day in the sun.’ I took his hands and let him help me up.

  ‘Come in, dear boy,’ I said without looking up. Edward came quietly into the office and sat down on the sofa. I continued reading back the notes I’d just dictated. I finished them and put them down behind me on the desk. I put my lenses on top to keep them in order. ‘You can go,’ I said to the secretary. He got up with a bow and left the room. I stared at Edward. He looked recovered from his opium. Sadly, the weals had come up over every part of his exposed body, and he winced at every move. His lower thighs were covered in a patchwork of bruises. It would be days before he felt better. He got up and came over to kiss me on the forehead. I nodded vaguely and motioned him back into his place.

  ‘You are angry with me,’ he said with an anxious look.

  I thought of the wine jug still in its hiding place. Edward was in no state to fish about behind the big book. I’d get up in a moment.

  ‘Not angry with you,’ I said. I twisted painfully round and looked again at the notes. ‘I am angry, I’ll confess, but not with you – nor over anything you might think important.’ He twisted carefully in his place and crossed his legs. I sighed. ‘Look, Edward, I’ve been fixed for years on a project of sight improvement that I’ve now come close to making effective. I made further interesting discoveries while you were asleep. Now, by yet another happy accident, I’ve discovered this.’ I reached round once more and took up a piece of parchment two inches by six. I’d dyed it black with ink, and had got one of my workmen to glue some one-inch leather studs on to it. At each end of the strip was a hole with a six-inch length of ribbon. I reached behind and tied it round my head, arranging it at the proper distance. ‘You may not see the pattern of holes where this covers my eyes. But, so long as the light continues good, I can see you almost perfectly. So long as there is any sunlight, I can read better than with those lenses.’ I pulled the thing off my head and dropped it on the floor.

  ‘But surely, this is good news?’ the boy asked. He looked confused. He’d plainly fixed it into his mind that I was angry with him. ‘If you can see better with this than having to carry those heavy glass discs about, why are you not happy?’

  Good question. I collected my thoughts to explain myself clearly in Latin.

  ‘Because, Edward, I don’t understand how letting the light into my eyes through a series of dots achieves the same effect as those lenses. I can imagine the deflection of atoms through a curved medium. These pinpricks are a mystery that destroys every theory of vision I’ve ever encountered. And because, Edward, I should have noticed something so simple as this before your grandparents were born. And because, Edward, I needlessly spent years in Jarrow – and, before then, years in Constantinople – barely able to read words chalked large on a board, let alone in a book. And because, Edward, right at the end of my life, I feel like a traveller who climbs over a ridge on what he thinks is an island and sees spread out before him a vast and limitless continent. Try to imagine the horror – or, at least, the sheer annoyance – of what I have discovered.’

  ‘But if you can see to read,’ he said, looking still more confused, ‘does it matter if you don’t know the reason? So long as you can read now, does it matter if you couldn’t read yesterday?’

  I sighed. Fair questions. And the
re was, even if the boy didn’t realise, a good philosophical theory behind them. But drinks with Meekal, and then this, had soured me no end. I got up and, with much grunting, managed to lay hands on the wine jug. I poured two full cups and handed one to Edward.

  ‘This should dull some of the pain,’ I said. I didn’t bother specifying whose. ‘If you don’t feel up to the banquet, His Highness the Governor will excuse you with all wishes for a better tomorrow. I, unfortunately, am judged fit to put in some kind of an appearance.’ I sat down again with a heavy thump that reminded me of my own bruised bones. ‘Do you know why I brought you here with me?’ I asked. He sat up and leaned carefully forward. ‘I brought you because I thought you might be of some use to me, and because I couldn’t think what else to do with you. On reflection, I think it would have been better to pack you off to Spain.’

  ‘They want something big of you?’ he asked. ‘Is it secrets of how to take Constantinople?’

  ‘Sort of,’ I answered. ‘My grandson Meekal’ – I ignored the further question in his eyes – ‘was too polite to come straight out with it this afternoon. But he wants me to help complete the destruction of the Empire. I have no doubt you will be some of the pressure he loads on me to go along with him. I won’t tell you when I guessed this much. But I do most humbly apologise for what I’ve semi-knowingly brought you into.’ I finished my cup and reached ineffectually forward for the jug. The light was now fading, and someone would come in soon to light the lamps.

  Edward got up and refilled my cup. He stood over me and looked down into my face. ‘Then do what they want,’ he said. ‘What’s one empire against another? No – these people have welcomed you with honour. All the Greeks want is to kill you. I can accept you’re upset about the cure for your eyes. I can’t see what the bother is about who rules in Constantinople.’